Features needed for the Tablo Dual HDMI

I accumulated my list of recommendations from my First Impressions post and put them here:

  1. IN DEC 15 FIRMWARE. How do I disable the Screensaver? There isn’t a choice for OFF. There should be.

  2. The 14-day guide needs a Search function. As-is, trying to find shows is a treasure hunt.

  3. Need to add the “name contains” function that the DVR+ has for specifying recordings. This is extremely useful.

  4. The Guide should pre-populate the entire 14-day window with text. Not wait to populate until someone scrolls to a blank portion of the Guide.

  5. The alphabetical listing in TV Shows should pre-populate everything. Each time I go to the alphabetical list, it has to repopulate all over again. Feel free to store all of this text info and the little pictures on my 8TB hard disk. There’s plenty of space…

  6. There needs to be a live signal quality indicator. Presently, the Dual HDMI seems to observe signal strength, not signal quality, and then only during the channel scan. Some stations broadcast different strengths day vs. night (based on RF noise from the sun).

  7. And the “weak signal” popup box that sometimes appears is useless. I keep hitting Retry and it keeps appearing. The Tablo Dual HDMI should just retry all by itself; and certainly not give up.

  8. The Tablo Dual HDMI needs the ability to record shows that don’t appear in the 14-day guide. This is where “name contains” becomes useful. Ditto for trying to record Part 1 of a 3-part series when I only recorded Part 2 and 3. “Gee, those were really good, I want to record Part 1”. So I need to record Part 1 when it is rebroadcast, but it doesn’t appear in the 14-day guide.
    _
    For example, the next airing of Secrets of the Dead on PBS is on February 20. I know this because I had to Google for it to find it. However, it is called “Secrets of the Dead: the Nero Files”. So on February 9, when it appears in the Tablo’s 14-day guide and I set to record all of those shows, will it record all Secrets of the Dead, or just this Nero episode?

  9. The recordings listing needs a more consolidated table. For example, I told it to record Saturday Night Live. I end up with lots of recordings (due to rebroadcasts). Some broadcasts are reruns that I’d like to see, some are new shows, some are just 2-hour time shifts, and some are last week’s show that comes on before this week’s show. I know that I want to watch the one that comes on Saturday night at 11:35pm. A simple table with title/date/time will suffice. The existing interface is very pretty, but I’d like a “simplified” version also with denser info.

  10. A recording shouldn’t give up if the signal becomes iffy. Just keep recording. Chances are, it will clear up after a bit. I can skip through 30-seconds at a time of a blank screen. But I can’t if the recording was terminated.

  11. the Skip button should have a programmable time. Right now, the Arrow button shows little previews in 10-second increments – that’s fine; it is quite sophisticated. But the arrow and FFWD buttons do the same thing. Making Skip be user selectable (30 seconds?, several choices) would be helpful to grossly differentiate it from the Arrow’s functionality.
    _
    Basically I just want to press the skip button and have it skip forward 30 seconds.

  12. the Settings | More Information | Status | MAC address field should contain the correct MAC address. Mine says 02:00:00:00:00:00. If we have to read the serial number on the sticker on the bottom of the unit, then allow me to type that MAC address into this on-screen field. My Tablo is buttoned up in my rack so getting to the sticker requires disassembling.

  13. the Settings | Tablo Serial Number field should have the correct serial number. I was told by Tablo Support that “this” Serial Number (SID_5087…) is not “the” serial number. The correct serial number is on a sticker on the bottom of the unit. The menu should allow me to type-in that serial number on-screen.

  14. This is from user EricC (paraphrased): When a recording conflict occurs (too many simultaneous in-process recordings and/or live TV), the Dual HDMI live TV simply stops with a full screen popup showing an error (e.g. “No Tuner available”). It should present a popup asking what to do instead of giving up. And timeout to the default choice after 15 seconds.

Thanks,

Scott

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Many of your points are valid, unless there was a complete overhaul with the “HDMI” device - all too often there seems to be unfortunate reasons why not…

Here… why it keeps asking, is a great one. Is it trying to wear you down? Has it ever worked for anyone? Why doesn’t is ask “Are You Ready To Accept Defeat?”. The device seem to realize it’s futile - why not design it to move on and not “cat and mouse” the user?

Hi @e645824 - One of your feature wishes made it into the latest firmware update:

Hi Scott, sorry I never responded to this. I pretty much dropped off the board after the first update was issued. See below for some more items for the list

@TabloTV - Thank you for continuing to push out updates. Timely updates are very reassuring that you are trying to improve the DUAL HDMI

Per Scott’s request, here are some additional ideas for software enhancements.

  1. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE kill this error screen:

I have no idea what it is trying to tell me, but every time it appears I click and it goes away. If you must have it, put it in a loop and click the “Retry Playback” button every second for 10 seconds or so. After 10 seconds you can tell us whatever we need to know, but my experience is that it will appear for 1 second and then be gone.

  1. When trying to watch a live show and both the tuners are in use, the current process is something along the lines of:

a) The spinner appears for several seconds.
b) If I’m not mistaken, the error screen shown above appears
c) After clicking “Retry Playback” a screen appears that no tuners are available.

I would suggest to always check tuner availability first after clicking “Watch” in live TV. If both tuners are in use, inform the user. I have to believe that would be nearly instantaneous.

BONUS POINTS: If both tuners are in use, present the user with the same “Resolve Conflicts” dialogue that you have on the Recordings screen.

For example, I have my unit set to record all Seinfeld shows. I probably have 30 shows recorded right now. If I see something on live TV that I want to watch, and you present me with the “Resolve Conflict” dialogue, I can quickly decide that I don’t need 31 Seinfeld’s and stop the current recording to watch the live show I was trying to select.

SUPER BONUS POINTS: On the “Resolve Conflicts” dialogue mentioned above, include an option to stop the current recording AND delete it. In my above example I don’t want a fraction of a show, I’ve got 30, I don’t care about the one that is currently causing the conflict, so allow me to quickly stop the recording and delete whatever has already recorded so that someday in the future I don’t start watching that episode only to find that it was stopped before the end.

  1. Add a 30 second skip button to the remote. Commercials are sold in 30 second blocks. When watching a show that’s in process and doesn’t yet have thumbnails (or even if it does have thumbnails) it would really be nice to hit a single button that will jump forward 30 seconds and then start playing. Adding on to this idea, a 10 second skip backwards would also be nice. In the event that the user skips just a little to far forward, the 10 second skip back comes in handy.

I realize that this might be difficult since the remotes are already in the field, but you should have asked be before you designed them… :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

  1. Add a priority ranking for recordings. I record several rerun series such as Seinfeld, Cheers, Big Bang Theory, etc. Since I’m just trying to build up a library of those shows, I would never want them to be a conflict with something that is a one time special event. If I could rank the reruns as “Low” priority, and say a one time Christmas special of some sort as “High” the Tablo could automatically resolve the conflict for me. (I missed a show I wanted once for this reason. It wasn’t a conflict when I set the recording, then became a conflict a few days later and I never noticed).

  2. I would like all screens to be transparent overlays. I often want to do something during a commercial break without leaving the show I’m watching (especially if I’ve built up a time shift). For example, sometimes I’m watching a show and I see an advertisement for a special I’d like to see. As it stands now I have to back out of the show (and lose an time shift I’ve built up) to set the recording. It would be nice If I could just call up an overlay (or split screen of some type) set the recording while I’m thinking about it.

  3. Oh, have I ever mentioned my thoughts about the live TV grid before… :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Thanks for your consideration on any of these suggestions.

-Steve

New product releases always go out the door with a known set of issues(problems). Fixes to many are ticketed and prioritized somewhere in the outstanding issue list.

I would expect the first few updates to address problems and not new features. And tablo spent years trying to get all the various apps for headless network attached models to be consistent.

It will be interesting to see if tablo allows the HDMI model feature set to significantly drift away from the network attached model. Especially since users can connect various network apps to the HDMI model.

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We’ve had almost 40 firmware updates for the networked DVRs, tons of app updates for all of our various streaming apps, so HDMI will be no different.

We’ll have frequent updates over the next little while to iron out some of the kinks, and then move to a more quarterly-ish cadence thereafter.

FYI - The FFWD button does skip by 20 seconds (not quite 30 but I’ve passed that feedback and the rest of your wishlist along to the team). The DPAD will take you 10 seconds forward or back.

Thanks, but it doesn’t skip by 20 seconds. It presents a picture menu where I can decide if I want it to 10,20,30,40,… seconds skips forward, then by using the arrow key, then the Enter key.

Likewise, the Quick Skip and FFWD do exactly the same thing. Based on the remote’s descriptive, that was probably not the designers’ original intension.

What I would like it to do is just skip forward 30 seconds when I press the button. The fancy popup picture menu is fine for the other button.

Thanks,

Scott

FYI –

The January firmware update did not incorporate any of #2-13 of the Features list (the first post of this thread).

Of those, #11, #12, and #13 are the most obvious and should be the easiest to fix.

Scott

Thanks for your feedback, we’re looking into you #11 & #12 for you right now via our support team. The MAC address you’re seeing is something we hope to correct for you in the short term.

I’m seeing empty guide slots since the firmware upgrade, but it seems only for shows playing around the current time. When I forward in the guide all guide slots are filled. Anyone else with this issue?

Edit: nevermind, rebooted and seems fixed for now

I’m a new user - as of Jan 7. I’ve seen the missing guide slots, too, but not often. Sometimes clicking the “Clear User Interface Data” button in the Settings (scroll all the way to bottom) fixes this and other temporary glitches. It’s akin to clearing the cache.

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Since the Edit system in this Thread only allows 10 edits of a Post, I can’t continue to keep updating the entry in Post 1. So here is the updated version of the list (that should be good for 9 more edits).

I accumulated my list of recommendations from my First Impressions post and put them here:

  1. IN DEC 15 FIRMWARE. How do I disable the Screensaver? There isn’t a choice for OFF. There should be.

  2. The 14-day guide needs a Search function. As-is, trying to find shows is a treasure hunt. For the TV Shows menu also. The WebApp for other Tablo systems contain a Search feature (the magnifying glass in the top-right corner). So the infrastructure exists; it just needs to be added to the Tablo Dual HDMI firmware.

  3. Need to add the “name contains” function that the Channel Master DVR+ has (had) for specifying recordings. This is extremely useful.

  4. The Guide just should pre-populate the entire 14-day window with text. Not wait to populate until someone scrolls to a blank portion of the Guide.

  5. The alphabetical listing in TV Shows should pre-populate everything. Each time I go to the alphabetical list, it has to repopulate all over again. Feel free to store all of this text info and the little pictures on my 8TB hard disk. There’s plenty of space…

  6. There needs to be a live signal quality indicator. Presently, the Dual HDMI seems to observe signal strength, not signal quality, and then only during the channel scan. Some stations broadcast different strengths day vs. night (based on RF noise from the sun). Since every show has a Settings option (via down arrow) where Enable Closed Caption is, perhaps also put a live signal quality indicator there.

  7. IN THE MARCH 20 FIRMWARE During a show, the “weak signal” popup box that sometimes appears is useless. I keep hitting Retry and it keeps appearing. The Tablo Dual HDMI should just retry all by itself; and certainly not give up.

  8. The Tablo Dual HDMI needs the ability to record shows that don’t appear in the 14-day guide. This is where “name contains” becomes useful. Ditto for trying to record Part 1 of a 3-part series when I only recorded Part 2 and 3. “Gee, those were really good, I want to record Part 1”. So I need to record Part 1 when it is rebroadcast, but it doesn’t appear in the 14-day guide.
    _
    For example, the next airing of Secrets of the Dead on PBS is on February 20. I know this because I had to Google for it to find it. However, it is called “Secrets of the Dead: the Nero Files”. So on February 9, when it appears in the Tablo’s 14-day guide and I set to record all of those shows, will it record all Secrets of the Dead, or just this Nero episode?

  9. The recordings listing needs a more consolidated table. For example, I told it to record Saturday Night Live. I end up with lots of recordings (due to rebroadcasts). Some broadcasts are reruns that I’d like to see, some are new shows, some are just 2-hour time shifts, and some are last week’s show that comes on before this week’s show. I know that I want to watch the one that comes on Saturday night at 11:35pm. A simple table with title/date/time will suffice. The existing interface is very pretty, but I’d like a “simplified” version also with denser info.

  10. IN THE MARCH 20 FIRMWARE A recording shouldn’t give up if the signal becomes iffy. Just keep recording. Chances are, it will clear up after a bit. I can skip through 30-seconds at a time of a blank screen. But I can’t if the recording was terminated.

  11. the Skip button should have a programmable time. Right now, the Arrow button shows little previews in 10-second increments – that’s fine; it is quite sophisticated. But the arrow and FFWD buttons do the same thing. Making Skip be user selectable (30 seconds?, several choices) would be helpful to grossly differentiate it from the Arrow’s functionality.
    _
    Basically I just want to press the skip button and have it skip forward 30 seconds.

  12. REMOVED FROM MARCH 20 FIRMWARE the Settings | More Information | Status | MAC address field should contain the correct MAC address. Mine says 02:00:00:00:00:00. If we have to read the serial number on the sticker on the bottom of the unit, then allow me to type that MAC address into this on-screen field. My Tablo is buttoned up in my rack so getting to the sticker requires disassembling.

  13. IN MARCH 20 FIRMWARE the Settings | Tablo Serial Number field should have the correct serial number. I was told by Tablo Support that “this” Serial Number (SID_5087…) is not “the” serial number. The correct serial number is on a sticker on the bottom of the unit. The menu should allow me to type-in that serial number on-screen.

  14. This is from user EricC (paraphrased): When a recording conflict occurs (too many simultaneous in-process recordings and/or live TV), the Dual HDMI live TV simply stops with a full screen popup showing an error (e.g. “No Tuner available”). It should present a popup asking what to do instead of giving up. And timeout to the default choice after 15 seconds.

  15. This is from user EricC in the other thread: “Record on the Fly” - While watching a LIVE TV channel, I would like to be able to “hit” RECORD to record the remainder of the currently-viewed program. Since the remote has no “RECORD” button, this could be achieved by adding this option (a “button”) to the down-arrow option on the remote.
    _
    In reading through that thread, there seem to be objections that this feature is too complex. Since other DVR systems can do this (e.g. CM DVR+, etc.) then the Tablo developers should be able to accomplish this also. The kludgy alternative is to either: (a) hit the BACK button, go to the Guide, find the show, tell it to record that show, or (b) hit the BACK button, go to the Guide, find the channel, tell it to start recording. Either of these trivial options accomplishes what is desired and Tablo can easily automatic the process. And it is an opportunity for Tablo to sell “upgraded” remote controls with more buttons.

  16. IN JAN 14 FIRMWARE. TV Shows that start with “The” or “A” should be listed in the alphabetical list using the second word. e.g. The Flash, The Flintstones, A Different World.

Unless there is an ungodly bug, firmware release seem to only appear every 4-5 months.

Thus I would assume that all features in your list won’t be implemented before your edit limit expires.

Since the Dual HDMI is new, firmware releases happened in mid-December and mid-January to address obvious bugs. Since they recently came out with a firmware update for the non-DualHDMI systems, they might be integrating those changes into the DualHDMI firmware. So I would expect (hope) for a firmware update shortly for the DualHDMI.

In working with Tablo Support, I know that they are working on #12 so it should be in the next firmware release. #13 is just as trivial.

Thanks,

Scott

Aren’t #12 and #13 bugs and not features? I’m only talking about features.

Are #2, #3, etc new features or bugs.

#2 is not needed. If you want to search by name, go to the “TV Shows” tab.

#3 is definitely a new feature.

#4 and #7 would be a priority for me

These are good suggestions, but for some of them I would caution trying to make an apples to apples comparison of Tablo to other DVR systems unless those systems are also transcoding while recording so that no further transcoding is needed on the playback devices.

Of course there are always changes that would make tablo users love their plex on nvidia shield even more.

Excellent point. As discussed in the past, there really isn’t a 1:1 comparison with OTA DVRs. They vary greatly, how the function, required hardware, playback options as well as technology differences.

Unlike many commercial cable/satellite conventional DVRs many had become accustomed to, were vastly similar in “features”.